$3M bond set for Milford man's probation violation

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published
8:00 pm EDT, Sunday, August 24, 2008

Anas Hourani
, 24, required to wear a monitoring device on his ankle following his recent plea in
Superior Court
in Bridgeport, was arrested for allegedly stealing jewelry from a local department store.

Hourani, of Black Rock Turnpike in Fairfield, was charged with fifth-degree larceny and is being held in lieu of $3 million.

According Milford police, Hourani was arrested Friday after he allegedly took a $400 pair of earrings from the Macy's at the

Westfield Connecticut Post
mall without paying for them. Hourani in July had pleaded guilty under the so-called Alford Doctrine to attempted murder, as well as a standard guilty plea to aggravated sexual assault, first-degree assault and first-degree burglary in Bridgeport Superior Court.

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He was permitted to remain free on $1.25 million bond, pending sentencing on Oct. 3. Senior Assistant State's Attorney

Cornelius Kelly
had told Judge
George Thim
he will recommend Hourani serve a 25-year prison term for attacking the woman when he is sentenced Oct. 3. However, the judge granted Hourani's lawyer,
Richard Silverstein
, the right to argue for a lesser term at the sentencing hearing.

Under an Alford plea, the defendant does not admit his guilt but concedes the state has enough evidence to find him guilty if he went to trial. The judge then finds the defendant guilty.

According to the prosecutor, in the early morning of Jan. 3, 2003, Hourani broke into the woman's apartment on Overlook Avenue in Fairfield after apparently peeping into her apartment window. He put a plastic tie around the sleeping woman's neck and choked her until she passed out.

Kelly said as the woman was being choked she feared that she was going to die.

He said Hourani then pulled off her clothes and raped her.

The Fairfield case was unsolved until early 2006 when a new DNA test linked Hourani to the attack on the woman.

Following his arrest for the rape, Kelly said Hourani admitted having sex with the Fairfield woman at least twice, but claimed he had paid her. He said he shoved her after she demanded more money for rough sex. But the woman denied having sex with Hourani, either consenually or for money at any time, and her version was substantiated by police, Kelly said.